Chef Mark Sylvester

'Til We Eat Again

Raw Carrot Cake with Cashew Creme

by

This has recently become my favorite snack. So easy to make. It has a few simple steps and I have made it four times now, so I have it down. The original recipe is from Russell James, The Raw Chef. I watch his podcast and really enjoy his take on preparing raw dishes. You can subscribe to his free podcast on itunes here.
Raw Carrot Cake with Cashew Creme
 
Print
Author:
Ingredients
  • 3 cups carrot, grated. Above you see that the cakes look red - that’s because I used heirloom red carrots, I love the color and it’s unexpected, which I love as well.
  • 2 cups almond meal
  • ¼ cup chopped raisins. I love the golden ones, though you can use whatever. It would be good with currants too I bet
  • 1 teaspoon nutmeg (and a little for the garnish)
  • 1½ teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
  • 1 cup date paste (To make the paste, blend ¾ cup pitted dates with ½ cup of juice. I used tangelo this time, have used orange and tangerine in the past) - Put the dates and juice in the Vitamix and blend for 2 min until velvety smooth
  • ½ teaspoon sea salt
  • 1 T grated rind (of the orange or tangelo you used in the date paste)
  • ½ cup dried coconut (raw)
Instructions
  1. Blend all of the ingredients in a mixer, then form into small cakes. I use a ring mold about 3 inches in diameter. I have tried small, large, loaf - pick one try it and the next time try something else. Make sure that whatever form you pick, have each cake consistent in size to have even drying.
  2. Once you have formed the cakes (this recipe makes 20 the size you see above) - put them on a dehydrator sheet and dry at 105 for about 12 hours. This will give them a very nice skin on the outside and the inside will still be very moist. Take them out and let them cool on the counter.
Cashew Creme Frosting
  1. This can go a lot of ways depending on how inventive you are, so feel free to play with it. The base recipe is:
  2. /2 cups soaked raw cashews, blended until velvety smooth
  3. tablespoons raw honey
  4. tablespoons Coconut Oil. I used Nutiva Coconut Manna as it has a nice thickness that works for the icing
  5. teaspoon vanilla
  6. pinch sea salt
  7. Blend all of this in the Vitamix until so smooth you can’t believe it’s ground nuts. Then blend 30 seconds more. Place in a frosting bag and put in the fridge for 60 min to cool, this makes piping it onto the cakes a lot easier and it will be runny. Note: Russel says add ½ c water and I tried that and it was too runny.
  8. Once thickened you can frost the cake and garnish. I used nutmeg and grated tangelo. Cool and serve with iced Almond Milk.
  9. ps. Thanks to good friends George and Andrea who are looking at buying a home in Ojai in an orchard and brought us a bag of tangelos from the property, which I used in this recipe.
Notes
Variations.
You could add chopped raw pecans
You could add cinnamon and cardamon
You could use ordinary orange carrots 😉
You could add oat flour or cashew flour in place of some of the almond flour. The original recipe calls for pecan flour, which I don’t have access to, now, if I lived in Texas…